ABOUT eleven o’clock that night, leaving M. de Guersaint in his room at
the Hotel of the Apparitions, it occurred to Pierre to return for a
moment to the Hospital of Our Lady of Dolours before going to bed
himself. He had left Marie in such a despairing state, so fiercely
silent, that he was full of anxiety about her. And when he had asked for
Madame de Jonquiere at the door of the Sainte-Honorine Ward he became yet
more anxious, for the news was by no means good. The young girl, said the
superintendent, had not even opened her mouth. She would answer nobody,
and had even refused to eat. Madame de Jonquiere, insisted therefore that
Pierre should come in. True, the presence of men was forbidden in the
women’s wards at night-time, but then a priest is not a man.
“She only cares for you and will only listen to you,” said the worthy
lady. “Pray come in and sit down near her till Abbe Judaine arrives. He
will come at about one in the morning to administer the communion to our
more afflicted sufferers, those who cannot move and who have to eat at
daybreak. You will be able to assist him.”
Pierre thereupon followed Madame de Jonquiere, who installed him at the
head of Marie’s bed. “My dear child,” she said to the girl, “I have
brought you somebody who is very fond of you. You will be able to chat
with him, and you will be reasonable now, won’t you?”
Marie, however, on recognising Pierre, gazed at him with an air of
exasperated suffering, a black, stern expression of revolt.
“Would you like him to read something to you,” resumed Madame de
Jonquiere, “something that would ease and console you as he did in the
train? No? It wouldn’t interest you, you don’t care for it? Well, we will
see by-and-by. I will leave him with you, and I am sure you will be quite
reasonable again in a few minutes.”
Pierre then began speaking to her in a low voice, saying all the kind
consoling things that his heart could think of, and entreating her not to
allow herself to sink into such despair. If the Blessed Virgin had not
cured her on the first day, it was because she reserved her for some
conspicuous miracle. But he spoke in vain. Marie had turned her head
away, and did not even seem to listen as she lay there with a bitter
expression on her mouth and a gleam of irritation in her eyes, which
wandered away into space. Accordingly he ceased speaking and began to
gaze at the ward around him.
The spectacle was a frightful one. Never before had such a nausea of pity
and terror affected his heart. They had long since dined, nevertheless
plates of food which had been brought up from the kitchens still lay
about the beds; and all through the night there were some who ate whilst
others continued restlessly moaning, asking to be turned over or helped
out of bed. As the hours went by a kind of vague delirium seemed to come
upon almost all of them. Very few were able to sleep quietly. Some had
been undressed and were lying between the sheets, but the greater number
were simply stretched out on the beds, it being so difficult to get their
clothes off that they did not even change their linen during the five
days of the pilgrimage. In the semi-obscurity, moreover, the obstruction
of the ward seemed to have increased. To the fifteen beds ranged along
the walls and the seven mattresses filling the central space, some fresh
pallets had been added, and on all sides there was a confused litter of
ragged garments, old baskets, boxes, and valises. Indeed, you no longer
knew where to step. Two smoky lanterns shed but a dim light upon this
encampment of dying women, in which a sickly smell prevailed; for,
instead of any freshness, merely the heavy heat of the August night came
in through the two windows which had been left ajar. Nightmare-like
shadows and cries sped to and fro, peopling the inferno, amidst the
nocturnal agony of so much accumulated suffering.
However, Pierre recognised Raymonde, who, her duties over, had come to
kiss her mother, before going to sleep in one of the garrets reserved to
the Sisters of the hospital. For her own part, Madame de Jonquiere,
taking her functions to heart, did not close her eyes during the three
nights spent at Lourdes.
She certainly had an arm-chair in which to rest herself, but she never
sat down in it for a moment with out being disturbed. It must be admitted
that she was bravely seconded by little Madame Desagneaux, who displayed
such enthusiastic zeal that Sister Hyacinthe asked her, with a smile:
“Why don’t you take the vows?” whereupon she responded, with an air of
scared surprise: “Oh! I can’t, I’m married, you know, and I’m very fond
of my husband.” As for Madame Volmar, she had not even shown herself; but
it was alleged that Madame de Jonquiere had sent her to bed on hearing
her complain of a frightful headache. And this had put Madame Desagneaux
in quite a temper; for, as she sensibly enough remarked, a person had no
business to offer to nurse the sick when the slightest exertion exhausted
her. She herself, however, at last began to feel her legs and arms
aching, though she would not admit it, but hastened to every patient whom
she heard calling, ever ready as she was to lend a helping hand. In Paris
she would have rung for a servant rather than have moved a candlestick
herself; but here she was ever coming and going, bringing and emptying
basins, and passing her arms around patients to hold them up, whilst
Madame de Jonquiere slipped pillows behind them. However, shortly after
eleven o’clock, she was all at once overpowered. Having imprudently
stretched herself in the armchair for a moment’s rest, she there fell
soundly asleep, her pretty head sinking on one of her shoulders amidst
her lovely, wavy fair hair, which was all in disorder. And from that
moment neither moan nor call, indeed no sound whatever, could waken her.
Madame de Jonquiere, however, had softly approached the young priest
again. “I had an idea,” said she in a low voice, “of sending for Monsieur
Ferrand, the house-surgeon, you know, who accompanies us. He would have
given the poor girl something to calm her. Only he is busy downstairs
trying to relieve Brother Isidore, in the Family Ward. Besides, as you
know, we are not supposed to give medical attendance here; our work
consists in placing our dear sick ones in the hands of the Blessed
Virgin.”
Sister Hyacinthe, who had made up her mind to spend the night with the
superintendent, now drew, near. “I have just come from the Family Ward,”
she said; “I went to take Monsieur Sabathier some oranges which I had
promised him, and I saw Monsieur Ferrand, who had just succeeded in
reviving Brother Isidore. Would you like me to go down and fetch him?”
But Pierre declined the offer. “No, no,” he replied, “Marie will be
sensible. I will read her a few consoling pages by-and-by, and then she
will rest.”
For the moment, however, the girl still remained obstinately silent. One
of the two lanterns was hanging from the wall close by, and Pierre could
distinctly see her thin face, rigid and motionless like stone. Then,
farther away, in the adjoining bed, he perceived Elise Rouquet, who was
sound asleep and no longer wore her fichu, but openly displayed her face,
the ulcerations of which still continued to grow paler. And on the young
priest’s left hand was Madame Vetu, now greatly weakened, in a hopeless
state, unable to doze off for a moment, shaken as she was by a continuous
rattle. He said a few kind words to her, for which she thanked him with a
nod; and, gathering her remaining strength together, she was at last able
to say: “There were several cures to-day; I was very pleased to hear of
them.”
On a mattress at the foot of her bed was La Grivotte, who in a fever of
extraordinary activity kept on sitting up to repeat her favourite phrase:
“I am cured, I am cured!” And she went on to relate that she had eaten
half a fowl for dinner, she who had been unable to eat for long months
past. Then, too, she had followed the torchlight procession on foot
during nearly a couple of hours, and she would certainly have danced till
daybreak had the Blessed Virgin only been pleased to give a ball. And
once more she repeated: “I am cured, yes, cured, quite cured!”
Thereupon Madame Vetu found enough strength to say with childlike
serenity and perfect, gladsome abnegation: “The Blessed Virgin did well
to cure her since she is poor. I am better pleased than if it had been
myself, for I have my little shop to depend upon and can wait. We each
have our turn, each our turn.”
One and all displayed a like charity, a like pleasure that others should
have been cured. Seldom, indeed, was any jealousy shown; they surrendered
themselves to a kind of epidemical beatitude, to a contagious hope that
they would all be cured whenever it should so please the Blessed Virgin.
And it was necessary that she should not be offended by any undue
impatience; for assuredly she had her reasons and knew right well why she
began by healing some rather than others. Thus with the fraternity born
of common suffering and hope, the most grievously afflicted patients
prayed for the cure of their neighbours. None of them ever despaired,
each fresh miracle was the promise of another one, of the one which would
be worked on themselves. Their faith remained unshakable. A story was
told of a paralytic woman, some farm servant, who with extraordinary
strength of will had contrived to take a few steps at the Grotto, and who
while being conveyed back to the hospital had asked to be set down that
she might return to the Grotto on foot. But she had gone only half the
distance when she had staggered, panting and livid; and on being brought
to the hospital on a stretcher, she had died there, cured, however, said
her neighbours in the ward. Each, indeed, had her turn; the Blessed
Virgin forgot none of her dear daughters unless it were her design to
grant some chosen one immediate admission into Paradise.
All at once, at the moment when Pierre was leaning towards her, again
offering to read to her, Marie burst into furious sobs. Letting her head
fall upon her friend’s shoulder, she vented all her rebellion in a low,
terrible voice, amidst the vague shadows of that awful room. She had
experienced what seldom happened to her, a collapse of faith, a sudden
loss of courage, all the rage of the suffering being who can no longer
wait. Such was her despair, indeed, that she even became sacrilegious.
“No, no,” she stammered, “the Virgin is cruel; she is unjust, for she did
not cure me just now. Yet I felt so certain that she would grant my
prayer, I had prayed to her so fervently. I shall never be cured, now
that the first day is past. It was a Saturday, and I was convinced that I
should be cured on a Saturday. I did not want to speak--and oh! prevent
me, for my heart is too full, and I might say more than I ought to do.”
With fraternal hands he had quickly taken hold of her head, and he was
endeavouring to stifle the cry of her rebellion. “Be quiet, Marie, I
entreat you! It would never do for anyone to hear you--you so pious! Do
you want to scandalise every soul?”
But in spite of her efforts she was unable to keep silence. “I should
stifle, I must speak out,” she said. “I no longer love her, no longer
believe in her. The tales which are related here are all falsehoods;
there is _nothing_, she does not even exist, since she does not hear when
one speaks to her, and sobs. If you only knew all that I said to her! Oh!
I want to go away at once. Take me away, carry me away in your arms, so
that I may go and die in the street, where the passers-by, at least, will
take pity on my sufferings!”
She was growing weak again, and had once more fallen on her back,
stammering, talking childishly. “Besides, nobody loves me,” she said. “My
father was not even there. And you, my friend, forsook me. When I saw
that it was another who was taking me to the piscinas, I began to feel a
chill. Yes, that chill of doubt which I often felt in Paris. And that is
at least certain, I doubted--perhaps, indeed, that is why she did not
cure me. I cannot have prayed well enough, I am not pious enough, no
doubt.”
She was no longer blaspheming, but seeking for excuses to explain the
non-intervention of Heaven. However, her face retained an angry
expression amidst this struggle which she was waging with the Supreme
Power, that Power which she had loved so well and entreated so fervently,
but which had not obeyed her. When, on rare occasions, a fit of rage of
this description broke out in the ward, and the sufferers, lying on their
beds, rebelled against their fate, sobbing and lamenting, and at times
even swearing, the lady-hospitallers and the Sisters, somewhat shocked,
would content themselves with simply closing the bed-curtains. Grace had
departed, one must await its return. And at last, sometimes after long
hours, the rebellious complaints would die away, and peace would reign
again amidst the deep, woeful silence.
“Calm yourself, calm yourself, I implore you,” Pierre gently repeated to
Marie, seeing that a fresh attack was coming upon her, an attack of doubt
in herself, of fear that she was unworthy of the divine assistance.
Sister Hyacinthe, moreover, had again drawn near. “You will not be able
to take the sacrament by-and-by, my dear child,” said she, “if you
continue in such a state. Come, since we have given Monsieur l’Abbe
permission to read to you, why don’t you let him do so?”
Marie made a feeble gesture as though to say that she consented, and
Pierre at once took out of the valise at the foot of her bed, the little
blue-covered book in which the story of Bernadette was so naively
related. As on the previous night, however, when the train was rolling
on, he did not confine himself to the bald phraseology of the book, but
began improvising, relating all manner of details in his own fashion, in
order to charm the simple folks who listened to him. Nevertheless, with
his reasoning, analytical proclivities, he could not prevent himself from
secretly re-establishing the real facts, imparting, for himself alone, a
human character to this legend, whose wealth of prodigies contributed so
greatly to the cure of those that suffered. Women were soon sitting up on
all the surrounding beds. They wished to hear the continuation of the
story, for the thought of the sacrament which they were passionately
awaiting had prevented almost all of them from getting to sleep. And
seated there, in the pale light of the lantern hanging from the wall
above him, Pierre little by little raised his voice, so that he might be
heard by the whole ward.
“The persecutions began with the very first miracles. Called a liar and a
lunatic, Bernadette was threatened with imprisonment. Abbe Peyramale, the
parish priest of Lourdes, and Monseigneur Laurence, Bishop of Tarbes,
like the rest of the clergy, refrained from all intervention, waiting the
course of events with the greatest prudence; whilst the civil
authorities, the Prefect, the Public Prosecutor, the Mayor, and the
Commissary of Police, indulged in excessive anti-religious zeal.”
Continuing his perusal in this fashion, Pierre saw the real story rise up
before him with invincible force. His mind travelled a short distance
backward and he beheld Bernadette at the time of the first apparitions,
so candid, so charming in her ignorance and good faith, amidst all her
sufferings. And she was truly the visionary, the saint, her face assuming
an expression of superhuman beauty during her crises of ecstasy. Her brow
beamed, her features seemed to ascend, her eyes were bathed with light,
whilst her parted lips burnt with divine love. And then her whole person
became majestic; it was in a slow, stately way that she made the sign of
the cross, with gestures which seemed to embrace the whole horizon. The
neighbouring valleys, the villages, the towns, spoke of Bernadette alone.
Although the Lady had not yet told her name, she was recognised, and
people said, “It is she, the Blessed Virgin.” On the first market-day, so
many people flocked into Lourdes that the town quite overflowed. All
wished to see the blessed child whom the Queen of the Angels had chosen,
and who became so beautiful when the heavens opened to her enraptured
gaze. The crowd on the banks of the Gave grew larger each morning, and
thousands of people ended by installing themselves there, jostling one
another that they might lose nothing of the spectacle! As soon as
Bernadette appeared, a murmur of fervour spread: “Here is the saint, the
saint, the saint!” Folks rushed forward to kiss her garments. She was a
Messiah, the eternal Messiah whom the nations await, and the need of whom
is ever arising from generation to generation. And, moreover, it was ever
the same adventure beginning afresh: an apparition of the Virgin to a
shepherdess; a voice exhorting the world to penitence; a spring gushing
forth; and miracles astonishing and enrapturing the crowds that hastened
to the spot in larger and larger numbers.
Ah! those first miracles of Lourdes, what a spring-tide flowering of
consolation and hope they brought to the hearts of the wretched, upon
whom poverty and sickness were preying! Old Bourriette’s restored
eyesight, little Bouhohort’s resuscitation in the icy water, the deaf
recovering their hearing, the lame suddenly enabled to walk, and so many
other cases, Blaise Maumus, Bernade Soubies,* Auguste Bordes, Blaisette
Soupenne, Benoite Cazeaux, in turn cured of the most dreadful ailments,
became the subject of endless conversations, and fanned the illusions of
all those who suffered either in their hearts or their flesh. On
Thursday, March 4th, the last day of the fifteen visits solicited by the
Virgin, there were more than twenty thousand persons assembled before the
Grotto. Everybody, indeed, had come down from the mountains. And this
immense throng found at the Grotto the divine food that it hungered for,
a feast of the Marvellous, a sufficient meed of the Impossible to content
its belief in a superior Power, which deigned to bestow some attention
upon poor folks, and to intervene in the wretched affairs of this lower
world, in order to re-establish some measure of justice and kindness. It
was indeed the cry of heavenly charity bursting forth, the invisible
helping hand stretched out at last to dress the eternal sores of
humanity. Ah! that dream in which each successive generation sought
refuge, with what indestructible energy did it not arise among the
disinherited ones of this world as soon as it found a favourable spot,
prepared by circumstances! And for centuries, perhaps, circumstances had
never so combined to kindle the mystical fire of faith as they did at
Lourdes.
* I give this name as written by M. Zola; but in other works on
Lourdes I find it given as “Bernarde Loubie--a bed-ridden old
woman, cured of a paralytic affection by drinking the water of
the Grotto.”--Trans.
A new religion was about to be founded, and persecutions at once began,
for religions only spring up amidst vexations and rebellions. And even as
it was long ago at Jerusalem, when the tidings of miracles spread, the
civil authorities--the Public Prosecutor, the Justice of the Peace, the
Mayor, and particularly the Prefect of Tarbes--were all roused and began
to bestir themselves. The Prefect was a sincere Catholic, a worshipper, a
man of perfect honour, but he also had the firm mind of a public
functionary, was a passionate defender of order, and a declared adversary
of fanaticism which gives birth to disorder and religious perversion.
Under his orders at Lourdes there was a Commissary of Police, a man of
great intelligence and shrewdness, who had hitherto discharged his
functions in a very proper way, and who, legitimately enough, beheld in
this affair of the apparitions an opportunity to put his gift of
sagacious skill to the proof. So the struggle began, and it was this
Commissary who, on the first Sunday in Lent, at the time of the first
apparitions, summoned Bernadette to his office in order that he might
question her. He showed himself affectionate, then angry, then
threatening, but all in vain; the answers which the girl gave him were
ever the same. The story which she related, with its slowly accumulated
details, had little by little irrevocably implanted itself in her
infantile mind. And it was no lie on the part of this poor suffering
creature, this exceptional victim of hysteria, but an unconscious
haunting, a radical lack of will-power to free herself from her original
hallucination. She knew not how to exert any such will, she could not,
she would not exert it. Ah! the poor child, the dear child, so amiable
and so gentle, so incapable of any evil thought, from that time forward
lost to life, crucified by her fixed idea, whence one could only have
extricated her by changing her environment, by restoring her to the open
air, in some land of daylight and human affection. But she was the chosen
one, she had beheld the Virgin, she would suffer from it her whole life
long and die from it at last!
Pierre, who knew Bernadette so well, and who felt a fraternal pity for
her memory, the fervent compassion with which one regards a human saint,
a simple, upright, charming creature tortured by her faith, allowed his
emotion to appear in his moist eyes and trembling voice. And a pause in
his narrative ensued. Marie, who had hitherto been lying there quite
stiff, with a hard expression of revolt still upon her face, opened her
clenched hands and made a vague gesture of pity. “Ah,” she murmured, “the
poor child, all alone to contend against those magistrates, and so
innocent, so proud, so unshakable in her championship of the truth!”
The same compassionate sympathy was arising from all the beds in the
ward. That hospital inferno with its nocturnal wretchedness, its
pestilential atmosphere, its pallets of anguish heaped together, its
weary lady-hospitallers and Sisters flitting phantom-like hither and
thither, now seemed to be illumined by a ray of divine charity. Was not
the eternal illusion of happiness rising once more amidst tears and
unconscious falsehoods? Poor, poor Bernadette! All waxed indignant at the
thought of the persecutions which she had endured in defence of her
faith.
Then Pierre, resuming his story, related all that the child had had to
suffer. After being questioned by the Commissary she had to appear before
the judges of the local tribunal. The entire magistracy pursued her, and
endeavoured to wring a retractation from her. But the obstinacy of her
dream was stronger than the common sense of all the civil authorities put
together. Two doctors who were sent by the Prefect to make a careful
examination of the girl came, as all doctors would have done, to the
honest opinion that it was a case of nervous trouble, of which the asthma
was a sure sign, and which, in certain circumstances, might have induced
visions. This nearly led to her removal and confinement in a hospital at
Tarbes. But public exasperation was feared. A bishop had fallen on his
knees before her. Some ladies had sought to buy favours from her for
gold. Moreover she had found a refuge with the Sisters of Nevers, who
tended the aged in the town asylum, and there she made her first
communion, and was with difficulty taught to read and write. As the
Blessed Virgin seemed to have chosen her solely to work the happiness of
others, and she herself had not been cured, it was very sensibly decided
to take her to the baths of Cauterets, which were so near at hand.
However, they did her no good. And no sooner had she returned to Lourdes
than the torture of being questioned and adored by a whole people began
afresh, became aggravated, and filled her more and more with horror of
the world. Her life was over already; she would be a playful child no
more; she could never be a young girl dreaming of a husband, a young wife
kissing the cheeks of sturdy children. She had beheld the Virgin, she was
the chosen one, the martyr. If the Virgin, said believers, had confided
three secrets to her, investing her with a triple armour as it were, it
was simply in order to sustain her in her appointed course.
The clergy had for a long time remained aloof, on its own side full of
doubt and anxiety. Abby Peyramale, the parish priest of Lourdes, was a
man of somewhat blunt ways, but full of infinite kindness, rectitude, and
energy whenever he found himself in what he thought the right path. On
the first occasion when Bernadette visited him, he received this child
who had been brought up at Bartres and had not yet been seen at
Catechism, almost as sternly as the Commissary of Police had done; in
fact, he refused to believe her story, and with some irony told her to
entreat the Lady to begin by making the briars blossom beneath her feet,
which, by the way, the Lady never did. And if the Abbe ended by taking
the child under his protection like a good pastor who defends his flock,
it was simply through the advent of persecution and the talk of
imprisoning this puny child, whose clear eyes shone so frankly, and who
clung with such modest, gentle stubbornness to her original tale.
Besides, why should he have continued denying the miracle after merely
doubting it like a prudent priest who had no desire to see religion mixed
up in any suspicious affair? Holy Writ is full of prodigies, all dogma is
based on the mysterious; and that being so, there was nothing to prevent
him, a priest, from believing that the Virgin had really entrusted
Bernadette with a pious message for him, an injunction to build a church
whither the faithful would repair in procession. Thus it was that he
began loving and defending Bernadette for her charm’s sake, whilst still
refraining from active interference, awaiting as he did the decision of
his Bishop.
This Bishop, Monseigneur Laurence, seemed to have shut himself up in his
episcopal residence at Tarbes, locking himself within it and preserving
absolute silence as though there were nothing occurring at Lourdes of a
nature to interest him. He had given strict instructions to his clergy,
and so far not a priest had appeared among the vast crowds of people who
spent their days before the Grotto. He waited, and even allowed the
Prefect to state in his administrative circulars that the civil and the
religious authorities were acting in concert. In reality, he cannot have
believed in the apparitions of the Grotto of Massabielle, which he
doubtless considered to be the mere hallucinations of a sick child. This
affair, which was revolutionising the region, was of sufficient
importance for him to have studied it day by day, and the manner in which
he disregarded it for so long a time shows how little inclined he was to
admit the truth of the alleged miracles, and how greatly he desired to
avoid compromising the Church in a matter which seemed destined to end
badly. With all his piety, Monseigneur Laurence had a cool, practical
intellect, which enabled him to govern his diocese with great good sense.
Impatient and ardent people nicknamed him Saint Thomas at the time, on
account of the manner in which his doubts persisted until events at last
forced his hand. Indeed, he turned a deaf ear to all the stories that
were being related, firmly resolved as he was that he would only listen
to them if it should appear certain that religion had nothing to lose.
However, the persecutions were about to become more pronounced. The
Minister of Worship in Paris, who had been informed of what was going on,
required that a stop should be put to all disorders, and so the Prefect
caused the approaches to the Grotto to be occupied by the military. The
Grotto had already been decorated with vases of flowers offered by the
zeal of the faithful and the gratitude of sufferers who had been healed.
Money, moreover, was thrown into it; gifts to the Blessed Virgin
abounded. Rudimentary improvements, too, were carried out in a
spontaneous way; some quarrymen cut a kind of reservoir to receive the
miraculous water, and others removed the large blocks of stone, and
traced a path in the hillside. However, in presence of the swelling
torrents of people, the Prefect, after renouncing his idea of arresting
Bernadette, took the serious resolution of preventing all access to the
Grotto by placing a strong palisade in front of it. Some regrettable
incidents had lately occurred; various children pretended that they had
seen the devil, some of them being guilty of simulation in this respect,
whilst others had given way to real attacks of hysteria, in the
contagious nervous unhinging which was so prevalent. But what a terrible
business did the removal of the offerings from the Grotto prove! It was
only towards evening that the Commissary was able to find a girl willing
to let him have a cart on hire, and two hours later this girl fell from a
loft and broke one of her ribs. Likewise, a man who had lent an axe had
one of his feet crushed on the morrow by the fall of a block of stone.*
It was in the midst of jeers and hisses that the Commissary carried off
the pots of flowers, the tapers which he found burning, the coppers and
the silver hearts which lay upon the sand. People clenched their fists,
and covertly called him “thief” and “murderer.” Then the posts for the
palisades were planted in the ground, and the rails were nailed to the
crossbars, no little labour being performed to shut off the Mystery, in
order to bar access to the Unknown, and put the miracles in prison. And
the civil authorities were simple enough to imagine that it was all over,
that those few bits of boarding would suffice to stay the poor people who
hungered for illusion and hope.
* Both of these accidents were interpreted as miracles.--Trans.
But as soon as the new religion was proscribed, forbidden by the law as
an offence, it began to burn with an inextinguishable flame in the depths
of every soul. Believers came to the river bank in far greater numbers,
fell upon their knees at a short distance from the Grotto, and sobbed
aloud as they gazed at the forbidden heaven. And the sick, the poor
ailing folks, who were forbidden to seek cure, rushed on the Grotto
despite all prohibitions, slipped in whenever they could find an aperture
or climbed over the palings when their strength enabled them to do so, in
the one ardent desire to steal a little of the water. What! there was a
prodigious water in that Grotto, which restored the sight to the blind,
which set the infirm erect upon their legs again, which instantaneously
healed all ailments; and there were officials cruel enough to put that
water under lock and key so that it might not cure any more poor people!
Why, it was monstrous! And a cry of hatred arose from all the humble
ones, all the disinherited ones who had as much need of the Marvellous as
of bread to live! In accordance with a municipal decree, the names of all
delinquents were to be taken by the police, and thus one soon beheld a
woeful _defile_ of old women and lame men summoned before the Justice of
the Peace for the sole offence of taking a little water from the fount of
life! They stammered and entreated, at their wit’s end when a fine was
imposed upon them. And, outside, the crowd was growling; rageful
unpopularity was gathering around those magistrates who treated human
wretchedness so harshly, those pitiless masters who after taking all the
wealth of the world, would not even leave to the poor their dream of the
realms beyond, their belief that a beneficent superior power took a
maternal interest in them, and was ready to endow them with peace of soul
and health of body. One day a whole band of poverty-stricken and ailing
folks went to the Mayor, knelt down in his courtyard, and implored him
with sobs to allow the Grotto to be reopened; and the words they spoke
were so pitiful that all who heard them wept. A mother showed her child
who was half-dead; would they let the little one die like that in her
arms when there was a source yonder which had saved the children of other
mothers? A blind man called attention to his dim eyes; a pale, scrofulous
youth displayed the sores on his legs; a paralytic woman sought to join
her woeful twisted hands: did the authorities wish to see them all
perish, did they refuse them the last divine chance of life, condemned
and abandoned as they were by the science of man? And equally great was
the distress of the believers, of those who were convinced that a corner
of heaven had opened amidst the night of their mournful existences, and
who were indignant that they should be deprived of the chimerical
delight, the supreme relief for their human and social sufferings, which
they found in the belief that the Blessed Virgin had indeed come down
from heaven to bring them the priceless balm of her intervention.
However, the Mayor was unable to promise anything, and the crowd withdrew
weeping, ready for rebellion, as though under the blow of some great act
of injustice, an act of idiotic cruelty towards the humble and the simple
for which Heaven would assuredly take vengeance.
The struggle went on for several months; and it was an extraordinary
spectacle which those sensible men--the Minister, the Prefect, and the
Commissary of Police--presented, all animated with the best intentions
and contending against the ever-swelling crowd of despairing ones, who
would not allow the doors of dreamland to be closed upon them, who would
not be shut off from the mystic glimpse of future happiness in which they
found consolation for their present wretchedness. The authorities
required order, the respect of a discreet religion, the triumph of
reason; whereas the need of happiness carried the people off into an
enthusiastic desire for cure both in this world and in the next. Oh! to
cease suffering, to secure equality in the comforts of life; to march on
under the protection of a just and beneficent Mother, to die only to
awaken in heaven! And necessarily the burning desire of the multitude,
the holy madness of the universal joy, was destined to sweep aside the
rigid, morose conceptions of a well-regulated society in which the
ever-recurring epidemical attacks of religious hallucination are
condemned as prejudicial to good order and healthiness of mind.
The Sainte-Honorine Ward, on hearing the story, likewise revolted. Pierre
again had to pause, for many were the stifled exclamations in which the
Commissary of Police was likened to Satan and Herod. La Grivotte had sat
up on her mattress, stammering: “Ah! the monsters! To behave like that to
the Blessed Virgin who has cured me!”
And even Madame Vetu--once more penetrated by a ray of hope amidst the
covert certainty she felt that she was going to die--grew angry at the
idea that the Grotto would not have existed had the Prefect won the day.
“There would have been no pilgrimages,” she said, “we should not be here,
hundreds of us would not be cured every year.”
A fit of stifling came over her, however, and Sister Hyacinthe had to
raise her to a sitting posture. Madame de Jonquiere was profiting by the
interruption to attend to a young woman afflicted with a spinal
complaint, whilst two other women, unable to remain on their beds, so
unbearable was the heat, prowled about with short, silent steps, looking
quite white in the misty darkness. And from the far end of the ward,
where all was black, there resounded a noise of painful breathing, which
had been going on without a pause, accompanying Pierre’s narrative like a
rattle. Elise Rouquet alone was sleeping peacefully, still stretched upon
her back, and displaying her disfigured countenance, which was slowly
drying.
Midnight had struck a quarter of an hour previously, and Abbe Judaine
might arrive at any moment for the communion. Grace was now again
descending into Marie’s heart, and she was convinced that if the Blessed
Virgin had refused to cure her it was, indeed, her own fault in having
doubted when she entered the piscina. And she, therefore, repented of her
rebellion as of a crime. Could she ever be forgiven? Her pale face sank
down among her beautiful fair hair, her eyes filled with tears, and she
looked at Pierre with an expression of anguish. “Oh! how wicked I was, my
friend,” she said. “It was through hearing you relate how that Prefect
and those magistrates sinned through pride, that I understood my
transgression. One must believe, my friend; there is no happiness outside
faith and love.”
Then, as Pierre wished to break off at the point which he had reached,
they all began protesting and calling for the continuation of his
narrative, so that he had to promise to go on to the triumph of the
Grotto.
Its entrance remained barred by the palisade, and you had to come
secretly at night if you wished to pray and carry off a stolen bottle of
water. Still, the fear of rioting increased, for it was rumoured that
whole villages intended to come down from the hills in order to deliver
God, as they naively expressed it. It was a _levee en masse_ of the
humble, a rush of those who hungered for the miraculous, so irresistible
in its impetuosity that mere common sense, mere considerations of public
order were to be swept away like chaff. And it was Monseigneur Laurence,
in his episcopal residence at Tarbes, who was first forced to surrender.
All his prudence, all his doubts were outflanked by the popular outburst.
For five long months he had been able to remain aloof, preventing his
clergy from following the faithful to the Grotto, and defending the
Church against the tornado of superstition which had been let loose. But
what was the use of struggling any longer? He felt the wretchedness of
the suffering people committed to his care to be so great that he
resigned himself to granting them the idolatrous religion for which he
realised them to be eager. Some prudence remaining to him, however, he
contented himself in the first instance with drawing up an _ordonnance_,
appointing a commission of inquiry, which was to investigate the
question; this implied the acceptance of the miracles after a period of
longer or shorter duration. If Monseigneur Laurence was the man of
healthy culture and cool reason that he is pictured to have been, how
great must have been his anguish on the morning when he signed that
_ordonnance_! He must have knelt in his oratory, and have begged the
Sovereign Master of the world to dictate his conduct to him. He did not
believe in the apparitions; he had a loftier, more intellectual idea of
the manifestations of the Divinity. Only would he not be showing true
pity and mercy in silencing the scruples of his reason, the noble
prejudices of his faith, in presence of the necessity of granting that
bread of falsehood which poor humanity requires in order to be happy?
Doubtless, he begged the pardon of Heaven for allowing it to be mixed up
in what he regarded as childish pastime, for exposing it to ridicule in
connection with an affair in which there was only sickliness and
dementia. But his flock suffered so much, hungered so ravenously for the
marvellous, for fairy stories with which to lull the pains of life. And
thus, in tears, the Bishop at last sacrificed his respect for the dignity
of Providence to his sensitive pastoral charity for the woeful human
flock.
Then the Emperor in his turn gave way. He was at Biarritz at the time,
and was kept regularly informed of everything connected with this affair
of the apparitions, with which the entire Parisian press was also
occupying itself, for the persecutions would not have been complete if
the pens of Voltairean newspaper-men had not meddled in them. And whilst
his Minister, his Prefect, and his Commissary of Police were fighting for
common sense and public order, the Emperor preserved his wonted
silence--the deep silence of a day-dreamer which nobody ever penetrated.
Petitions arrived day by day, yet he held his tongue. Bishops came, great
personages, great ladies of his circle watched and drew him on one side,
and still he held his tongue. A truceless warfare was being waged around
him: on one side the believers and the men of fanciful minds whom the
Mysterious strongly interested; on the other the unbelievers and the
statesmen who distrusted the disturbances of the imagination;--and still
and ever he held his tongue. Then, all at once, with the sudden decision
of a naturally timid man, he spoke out. The rumour spread that he had
yielded to the entreaties of his wife Eugenie. No doubt she did
intervene, but the Emperor was more deeply influenced by a revival of his
old humanitarian dreams, his genuine compassion for the disinherited.*
Like the Bishop, he did not wish to close the portals of illusion to the
wretched by upholding the unpopular decree which forbade despairing
sufferers to go and drink life at the holy source. So he sent a telegram,
a curt order to remove the palisade, so as to allow everybody free access
to the Grotto.
* I think this view of the matter the right one, for, as all who
know the history of the Second Empire are aware, it was about
this time that the Emperor began taking great interest in the
erection of model dwellings for the working classes, and the
plantation and transformation of the sandy wastes of the
Landes.--Trans.
Then came a shout of joy and triumph. The decree annulling the previous
one was read at Lourdes to the sound of drum and trumpet. The Commissary
of Police had to come in person to superintend the removal of the
palisade. He was afterwards transferred elsewhere like the Prefect.*
People flocked to Lourdes from all parts, the new _cultus_ was organised
at the Grotto, and a cry of joy ascended: God had won the victory!
God?--alas, no! It was human wretchedness which had won the battle, human
wretchedness with its eternal need of falsehood, its hunger for the
marvellous, its everlasting hope akin to that of some condemned man who,
for salvation’s sake, surrenders himself into the hands of an invisible
Omnipotence, mightier than nature, and alone capable, should it be
willing, of annulling nature’s laws. And that which had also conquered
was the sovereign compassion of those pastors, the merciful Bishop and
merciful Emperor who allowed those big sick children to retain the fetich
which consoled some of them and at times even cured others.
* The Prefect was transferred to Grenoble, and curiously enough his
new jurisdiction extended over the hills and valleys of La
Salette, whither pilgrims likewise flocked to drink, pray, and
wash themselves at a miraculous fountain. Warned by experience,
however, Baron Massy (such was the Prefect’s name) was careful to
avoid any further interference in religious matters.--Trans.
In the middle of November the episcopal commission came to Lourdes to
prosecute the inquiry which had been entrusted to it. It questioned
Bernadette yet once again, and studied a large number of miracles.
However, in order that the evidence might be absolute, it only registered
some thirty cases of cure. And Monseigneur Laurence declared himself
convinced. Nevertheless, he gave a final proof of his prudence, by
continuing to wait another three years before declaring in a pastoral
letter that the Blessed Virgin had in truth appeared at the Grotto of
Massabielle and that numerous miracles had subsequently taken place
there. Meantime, he had purchased the Grotto itself, with all the land
around it, from the municipality of Lourdes, on behalf of his see. Work
was then begun, modestly at first, but soon on a larger and larger scale
as money began to flow in from all parts of Christendom. The Grotto was
cleared and enclosed with an iron railing. The Gave was thrown back into
a new bed, so as to allow of spacious approaches to the shrine, with
lawns, paths, and walks. At last, too, the church which the Virgin had
asked for, the Basilica, began to rise on the summit of the rock itself.
From the very first stroke of the pick, Abbe Peyramale, the parish priest
of Lourdes, went on directing everything with even excessive zeal, for
the struggle had made him the most ardent and most sincere of all
believers in the work that was to be accomplished. With his somewhat
rough but truly fatherly nature, he had begun to adore Bernadette, making
her mission his own, and devoting himself, soul and body, to realising
the orders which he had received from Heaven through her innocent mouth.
And he exhausted himself in mighty efforts; he wished everything to be
very beautiful and very grand, worthy of the Queen of the Angels who had
deigned to visit this mountain nook. The first religious ceremony did not
take place till six years after the apparitions. A marble statue of the
Virgin was installed with great pomp on the very spot where she had
appeared. It was a magnificent day, all Lourdes was gay with flags, and
every bell rang joyously. Five years later, in 1869, the first mass was
celebrated in the crypt of the Basilica, whose spire was not yet
finished. Meantime, gifts flowed in without a pause, a river of gold was
streaming towards the Grotto, a whole town was about to spring up from
the soil. It was the new religion completing its foundations. The desire
to be healed did heal; the thirst for a miracle worked the miracle. A
Deity of pity and hope was evolved from man’s sufferings, from that
longing for falsehood and relief which, in every age of humanity, has
created the marvellous palaces of the realms beyond, where an almighty
Power renders justice and distributes eternal happiness.
And thus the ailing ones of the Sainte-Honorine Ward only beheld in the
victory of the Grotto the triumph of their hopes of cure. Along the rows
of beds there was a quiver of joy when, with his heart stirred by all
those poor faces turned towards him, eager for certainty, Pierre
repeated: “God had conquered. Since that day the miracles have never
ceased, and it is the most humble who are the most frequently relieved.”
Then he laid down the little book. Abbe Judaine was coming in, and the
Sacrament was about to be administered. Marie, however, again penetrated
by the fever of faith, her hands burning, leant towards Pierre. “Oh, my
friend!” said she, “I pray you hear me confess my fault and absolve me. I
have blasphemed, and have been guilty of mortal sin. If you do not
succour me, I shall be unable to receive the Blessed Sacrament, and yet I
so greatly need to be consoled and strengthened.”
The young priest refused her request with a wave of the hand. He had
never been willing to act as confessor to this friend, the only woman he
had loved in the healthy, smiling days of youth. However, she insisted.
“I beg you to do so,” said she; “you will help to work the miracle of my
cure.”
Then he gave way and received the avowal of her fault, that impious
rebellion induced by suffering, that rebellion against the Virgin who had
remained deaf to her prayers. And afterwards he granted her absolution in
the sacramental form.
Meanwhile Abbe Judaine had already deposited the ciborium on a little
table, between two lighted tapers, which looked like woeful stars in the
semi-obscurity of the ward. Madame de Jonquiere had just decided to open
one of the windows quite wide, for the odour emanating from all the
suffering bodies and heaped-up rags had become unbearable. But no air
came in from the narrow courtyard into which the window opened; though
black with night, it seemed like a well of fire. Having offered to act as
server, Pierre repeated the “Confiteor.” Then, after responding with the
“Misereatur” and the “Indulgentiam,” the chaplain, who wore his alb,
raised the pyx, saying, “Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins
of the world.” All the women who, writhing in agony, were impatiently
awaiting the communion, like dying creatures who await life from some
fresh medicine which is a long time coming, thereupon thrice repeated, in
all humility, and with lips almost closed: “Lord, I am not worthy that
Thou shouldst enter under my roof; but only say the word and my soul
shall be healed.”
Abbe Judaine had begun to make the round of those woeful beds,
accompanied by Pierre, and followed by Madame de Jonquiere and Sister
Hyacinthe, each of whom carried one of the lighted tapers. The Sister
designated those who were to communicate; and, murmuring the customary
Latin words, the priest leant forward and placed the Host somewhat at
random on the sufferer’s tongue. Almost all were waiting for him with
widely opened, glittering eyes, amidst the disorder of that hastily
pitched camp. Two were found to be sound asleep, however, and had to be
awakened. Several were moaning without being conscious of it, and
continued moaning even after they had received the sacrament. At the far
end of the ward, the rattle of the poor creature who could not be seen
still resounded. And nothing could have been more mournful than the
appearance of that little _cortege_ in the semi-darkness, amidst which
the yellow flames of the tapers gleamed like stars.
But Marie’s face, to which an expression of ecstasy had returned, was
like a divine apparition. Although La Grivotte was hungering for the
bread of life, they had refused her the sacrament on this occasion, as it
was to be administered to her in the morning at the Rosary; Madame Vetu,
however, had received the Host on her black tongue in a hiccough. And now
Marie was lying there under the pale light of the tapers, looking so
beautiful amidst her fair hair, with her eyes dilated and her features
transfigured by faith, that everyone admired her. She received the
sacrament with rapture; Heaven visibly descended into her poor, youthful
frame, reduced to such physical wretchedness. And, clasping Pierre’s
hand, she detained him for a moment, saying: “Oh! she will heal me, my
friend, she has just promised me that she will do so. Go and take some
rest. I shall sleep so soundly now!”
As he withdrew in company with Abbe Judaine, Pierre caught sight of
little Madame Desagneaux stretched out in the arm-chair in which
weariness had overpowered her. Nothing could awaken her. It was now
half-past one in the morning; and Madame de Jonquiere and her assistant,
Sister Hyacinthe, were still going backwards and forwards, turning the
patients over, cleansing them, and dressing their sores. However, the
ward was becoming more peaceful, its heavy darkness had grown less
oppressive since Bernadette with her charm had passed through it. The
visionary’s little shadow was now flitting in triumph from bed to bed,
completing its work, bringing a little of heaven to each of the
despairing ones, each of the disinherited ones of this world; and as they
all at last sank to sleep they could see the little shepherdess, so
young, so ill herself, leaning over them and kissing them with a kindly
smile.